. This study addresses remittance behavior in Germany in the new institutional framework. According to the existing theoretical models on remittances, household size and years in the hosting country affect remittances negatively in models based on altruism and positively in the case of those focusing on investment motives; other variables as for example income are considered to have the same sign (Rapoport/Docquier 2005). However, we have to bear in mind that economic models on altruism only consider income-conditional forms of this behavior; pure altruism would occur, if remittances are independent